A System Dynamics Model of the Development of New Technologies for Ship Systems

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Abstract

System Dynamics has been applied to various fields in the natural and social sciences. There still remain countless problems and issues where understanding is lacking and the dominant theories are event-oriented rather than dynamic in nature. One such research area is the application of the traditional systems engineering process in new technology development. The Navy has been experiencing large cost overruns in projects dealing with the implementation of new technologies on complex ship systems. We believe that there is a lack of understanding of the dynamic nature of the technology development process undertaken by aircraft-carrier builders and planners. Our research effort is to better understand the dynamics prevalent in the new technology development process and we use a dynamic modeling technique, namely, System Dynamics in our study.

We provide a comprehensive knowledge elicitation process in which members from the Newport News Shipbuilding, the Naval Sea Command Cost Estimating Group, and the Virginia Tech System Performance Laboratory take part in a group model building exercise. We build a System Dynamics model based on the information and data obtained from the experts. Our investigation of the dynamics yields two dominant behaviors that characterize the technology development process. These two dynamic behaviors are damped oscillation and goal seeking. Furthermore, we propose and investigate four dynamic hypotheses in the system. For the current structure of the model, we see that an increase in the complexity of new technologies leads to an increase in the total costs, whereas a increase in the technology maturity leads to a decrease in the total costs in the technology development process. Another interesting insight is that an increase in training leads to a decrease in total costs.